More From the ‘Community Leaders’

Residents and traders in Brick Lane, east London, have threatened protests and street blockades to prevent filming of a screen adaptation of a book by bestselling novelist Monica Ali which they claim is “racist and insulting” toward the Bangladeshi community…Last night, after a series of public meetings about the film, community leaders vowed to do “anything it takes” to block filming, labelling the book “a violation of the human rights of the community”.

Monica Ali’s novel is racist, insulting, and a violation of the human rights of the community – those community leaders certainly have the jargon down pat, don’t they. They know what you’re supposed to say – and the dear Guardian comes trotting up to help them say it.

Abdus Salique, chair of Brick Lane Traders’ Association, who is coordinating the campaign from his sweetshop, said he feared the book would enrage younger members of the community…”Of course, they will not do anything unless we tell them to, but I warn you they are not as peaceful as me. She [Ali] has imagined ideas about us in her head. She is not one of us, she has not lived with us, she knows nothing about us, but she has insulted us.”

She. She, she, she, she, she. Is it paranoia to think that five repetions of the female pronoun in quick succession are used on purpose to rile up ‘younger members of the community’? Any bets on what gender those ‘younger members’ are? Any thoughts on the whole air of menace and threat? She is a racist and has insulted the community and violated its human rights, and the young men (lots of them) are enraged and we’re not sure we can hold them back…Threatening enough? Bullying enough? Disgusting enough? Yes, I think so.

“She is definitely a good writer,” said Mahmoud Rauf, chairman of the Brick Lane Business Association. “But she didn’t use her skill to the benefit of the community. We will take this as far as it has to go.”

Because…any writer from ‘the community’ is obliged and required to use her skill ‘to the benefit of the community’ according to our lights, and if she fails to do that, we will ‘take this’ as far as it has to go, by threatening everyone in sight. We all know what happens to writers who piss off ‘the community,’ don’t we.

Interesting that an explicitly ‘Asian’ publication bothered to get a few opposing views from people in the area, giving the story some context (20 people in a sweet shop). The BBC and The Grauniad, OTOH, are happy to make it sound like this is some massive public protest.

BTW – Abdal Hakim Murad mentioned it on Thought for the Day this morning:

But the outlandish claims were challenged by a Bengali media executive from East London, telling AIM magazine on condition of anonymity that it was all taking place in a sweet shop that could barely hold 20 people.

“Half of them [protesting] haven’t even read the bloody book! They’ve just heard a few pieces about racial inter-mixing and what not, and now they’re throwing up a fuss. Brick Lane is a big area and it’s very political. There lots of different people with different attitudes and voices.”

The awful thing is that we, my generation who are now in their 40s, used to take this sort of religious bigotry as a bit of an impotent joke, Mary Whitehouse and the Pope and co trying to ban things like the Life of Brian, the pill, and sex before marriage. It seemed that a pragmatic rationality was on the ascendancy then, and that hocus-pocus based authoritarianism – itself in perpetuity being the outlook merely of a bated minority – was being rapidly assigned to the ‘anti-progressive’ bin of 20th century civic development. What happened ? We now live in and age of Theocracy and Anxiety, and have to take all this proscriptive, pinch-minded blather seriously and show it ‘respect’.